07.07.2026 The Framework Podcast

The federal government moved to assert primacy over AI rules this week. On July 1 the FTC proposed a policy statement warning that companies which secretly tune AI outputs toward undisclosed goals may be deceiving consumers under Section 5—and, in a first, declared Colorado’s AI Act impliedly preempted where it conflicts. It arrived one day before the July 2 deadline for the first deliverables under the White House’s June frontier-AI executive order. States did not wait: California enacted a law requiring public-school staff to be human, and New Jersey passed a Kids Code Act and a ban on algorithmic rent-setting, all on June 30. Congress was in recess. The through-line is a widening collision between a federal push to centralize AI governance and a state pipeline that keeps producing enforceable law.